This is the second report from the author, who is currently working in Afghanistan. Don’t miss his first article, “Ensuring Quality in a War Zone.” 
--Editor

They told us the road was clear. They didn’t say it was safe; it was a dirt road that ran seven kilometers through the district of Shah Wali Kot, the Taliban’s primary stronghold. But Dahla Dam Road was in a sparsely populated rural area, where almost no one lived. There were perhaps four villages in the vicinity of the road, and none of these, we were told, were large enough to bother contacting. So the road, they assured us, was clear.

The Dahla Dam, a defunct hydroelectric dam originally built by the U.S. government during the 1950s, is in need of serious repair, but heavy equipment cannot traverse the seven-kilometer dirt stretch between the dam and the nearest paved road. For this reason, we were hired to pave the way to the dam. Dahla Dam Road was a high-profile project; the Prime Minister of Canada was being updated on it, so the client was in a hurry for us to begin. They encouraged us to bring in armed guards, armored vehicles, and whatever other hard security we could think of, anything that would get us moving quickly.

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